


My Body Killing Floor

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Blood, Blood and Injury, Catharsis, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gay Keith (Voltron), Grammarly is my beta, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Inspired by Poetry, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Keith being a little freak, M/M, Metaphors, Misunderstandings, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, discussions about death, if you read into it, set?? at some point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:53:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28111962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: He can still feel a phantom blade in his hands, can still feel the upward thrust, the breaking of tendons, the spent muscle. Or maybe he’s just making that up - because it was the scream that had made him stop ripping his bayardup, up, up,not the sounds reverberating through the blade and into his hands, not the seizing of the body.This feels like when you push just too far. Like when you say somethingjusta little too mean,justa little too honest, to a friend and suddenly your conversation isn’t funny anymore.This feels like a confession.OrEnding someone’s life is complicated. Deep in the depths of the endless galaxy, Keith grapples with it in his own way.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	My Body Killing Floor

**Author's Note:**

> “It’s the same story over & over. My body hunting-field. My body slaughterhouse. I’m coughing up my own lungs. I’m spilling all this red into the street. I do it because I love you. I can’t help it if I love you.”
> 
> \- Yves Olade

“Let me think,” Lance puts his hand to his chin and strokes an invisible beard, “I have four siblings, my favorite fruit is grapefruit, and,” He gives the beard a few more caresses, thinking, then unfurls a Cheshire grin, “and I use to have hair just as long and ridiculous as yours when I was younger,”

“Lance, can we not do this right now? We’re literally on a mission,” Keith groans, twirling his bayard lazily at his side as they walk down an abandoned hallway, not any more poised for action than Lance is.

“C’mon Keith, don’t you ever have any fun? Blue scanned this place for biorhythms, it was deserted. What’s a little Two Truths One Lie while we look for the stupid information hub?” Keith rolls his eyes but relents. He secretly loves to learn little things about Lance.

“Fine,” Keith taps his chin, playing along, “The lies are the part about your siblings and the thing about grapefruits. The truth _must_ be that you had long hair when you were younger,” He grins and glances sideways at Lance, who looks affronted. “You hate my hair too much to not be overcompensating for something,” Lance punches his arm lightly and Keith laughs, rubbing the spot.

“Haha, very funny, man, but I’ll have you know that my hair has always maintained this graceful shape. Plus, I do have four siblings and grapefruit is a gross grandma food,” Keith huffs out another laugh at Lance’s answer and they continue walking down the hallway in silence, this time a little more in each other’s vicinity. 

The underwater base is cold and hollow. Galra buildings are usually dim, only allowing for the light from magenta screens and sparse strips of purple fluorescents, but this one is unusually so. There are no windows to see the stars poking in, only the endless monotony of blank metal hallways and their boots clomping through the silence. You’d think that even the Galra would like to have a nice deep-sea window to look at the wildlife, but apparently not.

The two of them had crammed into Blue, her being the only one able to withstand the beyond freezing water and incredible depth, and been tasked to visit the deep-sea base on the planet Habinthe. Pidge had told them that, save for a few semi-activated droids, the place should be devoid of life; the planet had become uninhabitable for even the imperialist interests of the Galra. 

“The only thing is,” Pidge had told them with a sly smile, looking over her glasses at either of them, “they forgot to wipe their system down during their evacuation. According to a source in the Blade of Marmora, this base contains information on the locations and export schedules of secret Galra mining colonies all over the galaxy,” 

“Great. So what type of stuff does Habinthe mine?” Lance had asked Pidge lazily, picking at his nails, then suddenly dropping his hand and getting excited, “Hey, didn’t the Garrison teach us that there are planets that, like, rain diamonds or something? Could this be one of them?” 

“Yes, Lance. It’s hypothesized that both Neptune and Venus and countless other uninhabitable planets could rain diamonds, but this isn’t anything like that,” Pidge had explained. She typed away on her computer, bringing up a chart and gesticulating towards different squiggles as she spoke.

“Because of Habinthe’s placement in the galaxy and the stage at which the planet currently resides in its life cycle, the geological make-up is perfect for carbon-rich deposits deep under the ocean,”

“What, coal then?” Keith interjects, crossing his arms and squinting at the chart, “Aren’t the Galra a little advanced for fossil fuels?”

“Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, but then I realized that it's probably not about the raw material at all, it's probably about what it can be compressed into,” Pidge returned.

“So what I’m hearing,” Lance grinned cheekily, “is that it is about diamonds after all,” Keith rolled his eyes. 

“Yes, Lance,” Pidge said again, this time with more exasperation, “it's about diamonds. Now, how about you two scurry off and bring me that data before Habinthe blows up or gets eaten by a Weblum or something,”

She hadn’t looked up as she said goodbye, instead waving over her shoulder as Keith and Lance left to board Blue. 

Dangling from a carabiner on Lance’s belt is the USB stick they need to download the information onto; it’s thin and gray and about as long as one of Lance’s fingers. _Speaking of Lance’s fingers_ , Keith thinks, trailing his eyes to where they grip his blaster, one poised next to the trigger, long and gloved in black. Openly longing, Keith’s eyes trail up his blue and white armor, landing on his bobbing Adam’s apple, further up to his sharp chin, to his lips, to his eyes, which are already staring back at him. Keith falters, then whips his head forward and starts walking with more gusto,

“Let's just finish this so we can get back to the castle,” He bites out, hoping the burning of his face is masked in the dim hallway glow. He hears Lance speed up behind him, catching up in just a few strides with those long legs. 

“It's your turn now,” Lance says conversationally, breaking the silence between them. _Damn him_ , Keith thinks, _that silence is the only thing keeping this electric fence up between us_. They pass a hallway that shoots off in another direction. Keith brings up the holographic map and sees that their path disregards the hallway. They keep walking onward.

“For what?” He answers Lance, who scoffs.

“Your turn to tell me two truths and one lie, dude. I need to know all the dark truths you hide in that vast _mente_ of yours,” He explains, “God, will you slow down? How can your little legs even go that fast?” 

Keith comes to a hard stop as a fork splits their path into two separate hallways and turns to Lance.

“Okay. How about you go back and wait in Blue and I’ll get the data myself, then? Since I’m so fast?” He says angrily, folding his arms. He doesn't even know why he starts these little arguments, he doesn't mind that Lance called his legs short.

“Oh you would like that, wouldn’t you? To get the glory all to yourself, ‘Lone-Wolf’ Keith,” Lance adds, adding mocking quotations with his fingers as he says the stupid nickname. How Keith worships those fingers.

“‘Get the glory’?” Keith says incredulously, “Lance, it's not my fault your stupid giraffe legs can’t keep up-” 

“Well giraffes are beautiful and endangered creatures Keith so that's a compliment-” Lance retorts, 

“What are you, eleven? Next, are you gonna say that dogs bark and bark is on trees and trees are beautiful so being called a-”

“-Bitch is a compliment? Yes, I was!” Lance interrupts loudly, throwing his arms into the air. Keith has a retort on the tip of his tongue and both fists clenched when they’re both startled apart by the sound of blaster fire hitting the wall between them. Lance and Keith both whip their heads to look down the dark hallway behind them. 

“Shit,” Lance breaths, his helmet materializing, bringing his blaster up to eye-level and shooting off a few rounds. How quickly he can forget petty arguments, how quickly Keith will rise to his bait, and Lance to his; this unsustainable game they play.

There's a pack of dusty-looking droids firing at them. Keith materializes his shield and kneels in front of Lance to protect his lower half. He looks up at him and imagines that his helmet isn’t there, that he can see the ferocious glint in his eyes, the confident upturn of his chin, the halo of hair that flies free when it gets tousled.

“I’ll run down the left hallway and draw them away. You have the USB stick - go down the right, find the information hub, and download the files. We’ll meet back at the Blue Lion at the loading bay. I’ll keep them distracted,” Keith plans. Lance’s brow furrows but he keeps firing, knocking down a droid with five shots to the chest. It would have quieted its beating heart if it had one. 

Lance shakes his head, “No. I’ll distract them, you take the USB and get out of here,” He fumbles to unclip the carabiner with one hand, still shooting with his right, but Keith grows irritated.

“Lance, we don’t have time for this! They don’t get tired, we do. When their fire calms down, we’ll split up,” Lance purses his lips, thinking.

“Fine, but only after I take down a few more of these guys,” he relents. And he does. Quickly, Lance picks off half of the swarm of droids, and Keith’s shield is growing blistering hot, making him start to sweat, causing the skin on his arms to prickle uncomfortably. There's a pause in the incoming fire.

“Besides,” He says, looking up at Lance from behind the shield, “I’m the fastest. Break!” Keith yells, smirking and running towards the much-diminished group of droids and brandishing his sword fiercely. He hears Lance curse then clomp off in the other direction, the USB jingling on his belt. Keith slashes and stabs at the droid’s chests, at their throats. One of them swings for his head but he ducks and sinks his bayard into its side then sends it swinging into two others who topple like bowling pins. He rushes back, surveying the carnage, then starts backing down the left hallway, trying to lead them away.

“That's right, follow me,” He taunts, then turns and runs down it. He hears the scrambling of metal-clad feet behind him, feels the heat of blaster-fire rushing past his ears, charging the air. As he runs, the hallway seems to grow narrower and narrower, colder and colder, like they’re running through a vein into the beating heart of the frozen ocean. 

A shot catches the thick padding on his shoulder and he grunts, feeling the burning travel inward. He turns toward a few remaining droids and slashes them down, then winds his way farther into the labyrinth. He hears just one set of boots pursuing him now - close.

It shoots at him, scalding the chink behind his knee where the calf armor fails to meet the thigh armor. Keith topples forward, hitting the ground roughly, his bayard skidding away and dematerializing. He swiftly turns over, hoping to avoid being over-run by one droid, how ironic that would be, but isn’t fast enough. Already above him, the droid brings his blaster down hard on Keith’s face, splitting the skin on the bridge of his nose, maybe breaking it. He had forgotten to materialize his helmet. The droid brings his blaster down again, but this time Keith is ready. Sitting up slightly, he seizes the droid’s arms and flips him over onto the floor, then he scrambles up, panting, wiping at the blood pouring out his nostrils and dripping onto his chest plate. 

He rematerializes his bayard and helmet and takes a short rest, leaning slightly onto his left leg, the wound behind his knee still burning.

It is with a sense of savage enjoyment that he reams the last droid through the chest as it staggers up and, running, rams it into the wall. Panting for a few seconds, he stalls, staring up into the opaque visor of the droid, feeling it twitch below him. _Stop moving_ , he thinks and tears his blade upward. Only instead of the usual shower of sparks and stink of burning rubber that Keith has grown used to, the droid lets out the most un-droid-like sound he’s ever heard. Keith thinks of foxes calling out to each other at night. It feels like a burst of red in his mind.

Keith’s fingers spring apart, leaving his blade stuck in the heaving, _heaving_ , chest of the figure, and surges backward to press himself against the other side of the narrow hallway. Heart racing, he whips his head to look down either end; except for him and this groaning, _groaning_ , figure, he’s alone.

Dead, is all Keith can think. Dead, dead, dying. Has this ever happened before? How many soldiers dressed in metal had he mowed down, how many had he taken pleasure in ripping apart? How many of them were not droids, but living, breathing, blood-pumping _beings_?

He can still feel a phantom blade in his hands, can still feel the upward thrust, the breaking of tendons, the spent muscle. Or maybe he’s just making that up - because it was the scream that had made him stop ripping his bayard up, up, up, not the sounds reverberating through the blade and into his hands, not the seizing of the body. This feels like when you push _just_ too far. Like when you say something _just_ a little too mean, a little too honest, to a friend and suddenly your conversation isn’t funny anymore. This feels like a confession. 

Cautiously, he unsticks himself from the opposite wall and takes a few shuddering steps forward, afraid that the droid-not-droid might spring toward him at any moment. 

“Hello,” He says, not necessarily a question. It's barely a whisper in the quiet section of this compound. Distantly he can hear the sound of blasters and fighting. How far away it all seems. Keith edges closer, daring to speak again, this time with more confidence.

“Hello? Are you okay?” As soon as it leaves his mouth he realizes how stupid the question is. _You just stabbed him, idiot_ , he thinks. He takes another few steps toward the slumped figure and kneels beside it.

The droid’s armor is chrome in the dim light, both arms slack against the metal floor and legs outstretched. Keith’s red and white bayard is still stuck half-way through its chest and moves slightly every few seconds; the droid, the person, is unmistakably breathing. Keith lets out a shaky breath. He can see it spreading now: the thick pool of blood on the floor expanding outwards. It's like when you’re little and waiting for the bath to fill up, waiting for it to lick your toes and then your ankles, growing higher and higher until you finally dunk your head under. Keith tries to avoid its spread but as he edges forward - he has to take off the figure’s helmet, he needs to know - his knee slides in it a bit. Their helmet is heavy and thick sheet metal, but it doesn’t matter, he could have been wearing a plastic bucket for all it helped this soldier’s chances of survival, and makes a soft _shh_ sound as it decompresses. A hush. 

Their eyes meet immediately. Keith has noticed that, unlike those of mixed-descent, pure Galra have unempathetic voids of glowing yellow for eyes. This individual before him is not pure Galra. His pupils are blown so wide they engulf the irises, making it so that the inky black is surrounded with only a thin ring of orange: a glowing halo.

He shakily places the soldier’s helmet to the side and, keeping his eyes locked with the person in front of him, pulls off his own as well.

The cold air of the hallway is biting cold. He doesn’t breathe in, not deeply, neither does the soldier. He’s still twitching, heaving, trying to draw breaths. It's about to end for him. They regard each other. The soldier's face is covered in muted purple leathery skin, violent tufts of violet hair sticking with sweat against their forehead. 

Keith has to look away. He can’t handle the life pouring out of him.

Keith grips the handle of his bayard. It's still stuck there in the chest of the Galra soldier, whose eyes are wide and watery but surely feeling every ounce of fire. It's still stuck there where he just sunk it one minute ago - or had it been five? He doesn’t know how long it's been at this point, if the information has been downloaded or if Lance is looking for him, it doesn’t seem to matter. All that matters right now is to undo what he’s done, to press the leaf back onto the stem from which he’s plucked it. 

He grits his teeth and starts to pull. The blade slides out a few centimeters and he can see how the white now blends in with the red accents. 

So fast it doesn’t seem possible, especially in his current state, the soldier slaps his hand over Keith’s. It's warm and solid as iron over his own.

“Look at me,” The soldier rasps. “Look. Look,” 

Keith’s eyes, which had been firmly planted on the entrance wound, the penetration of his sword into the long, backwards-L-shaped hole, don’t move. The soldier presses hard on Keith’s fingers, so hard they burn, yet he still doesn’t look. It would all feel less real this way. Keith could simply yank the weapon out and walk away, he would never have to confront the truth of what this interaction has been: a murder. Why can’t he just not care? This is a Galra soldier we’re talking about, they blow up entire planets, they have ended countless lives. He doesn’t deserve to be seen as he drizzles away onto the metal floor. Why can’t he just have - what? Just have what?

Keith tries to think of an alternative that he could have gone to instead of stabbing this soldier. When has he ever disarmed or injured an appendage or rendered someone unconscious? When has he ever done anything but go for the kill? 

Because all those times the five of them were in-step, moving cyclically and well-practiced through a maze of hazy purple-lit hallways, who could notice when a sword didn’t cut through as easily? When there were no sparks of droids burning battery acid right through the air, only the smell of something vaguely sentient? When the hum in the air wasn’t from whirring electronics, but from the adrenaline of masked and fanged Galran soldiers, bearing their teeth, shooting electrons in their brains? How many times had he left soldiers, just like him, pooling in their own blood? How many times had he run off, just having set a bomb, and not thought of what came after?

Keith finally meets his eyes. It's startling. He can feel his eyes getting as wide as the soldier’s.

_I see you_ , Keith wants to gasp, _I see you, I see you, I see you. I feel like I am you_. It's a rolling mantra in his brain. But instead, he trembles, the hand wrapped in the Galra soldier’s grows strong and he rips the sword out in one motion. Fresh blood squirts from the now unobstructed wound. The soldier doesn’t even seem to notice it leave him, doesn’t seem to notice how he and Keith, born conjoined twins and grown into old men in those stretching moments, have been removed from each other. Instead, his hand flops into his blood-sodden lap. Keith stands up.

The soldier bears his pointed teeth in one last smile, the wrinkled skin around his eyes crinkling - a parry, a return stab into Keith’s own abdomen - then goes still. The humming of veins stops, instead replaced with Keith’s staggered breaths and the metal-on-metal sound of him taking one step back, then another. 

Looking down at the dead soldier from a few feet away, it could have been anyone who killed him. His eyes are still open, though the yellow is duller and the black irises, which used to be wide and all-encompassing, have a distinct oil-spill sheen to them. Keith brings a hand to his forehead and wipes back his black bangs, which are plastered with sweat.

How quiet dying is. Death has always been something Keith was riding on the same track as; racing down the shiny flank of it as they gallop around a corner, him always ahead and feeling the exhilaration of the seemingly miles-wide sliver of space between them. Is this it? Is this how it feels to just…end it all? He looks down at the stained bayard in his right hand. It feels wrong that this two-and-a-half-foot piece of metal could end someone’s life. Years and years of living and thinking and running and breathing and being caught up in your own story - ended. All it takes is anger and a few seconds and you’re the halved pomegranate on someone else’s cutting board. 

Keith bends down to pick up his discarded helmet and puts it on, then transforms his bayard so that it disappears back to his thigh.

Footsteps echo up the hallway behind him. There must be five or six sets of droid boots coming toward him. Or, who knows, maybe they’re living Galra too. He aches with exhaustion, won’t this ever end?

Keith suddenly comes back into himself all at once. He slaps his hand to the button on his helmet and turns his communications back on.

“-eith! Keith, come in,” It's the static sounds of Lance’s yelling. He takes one last long look at the corpse and catalogs every bit of him: leathery skin, violet tufts of sweaty hair, slumped shoulders, deep and jagged and oozing L-shaped gash in his chrome chest-plate. _I put that there_ , he confesses to himself, his thoughts feeling like _shh_ , a lot like _Look. Look._

“Lance, what is it?” He finally answers as he turns away from the body to run down the hall, “Where are you?” He hears Lance scoff in disbelief.

“Where am I? Dude, I’ve been waiting for you in Blue for ten minutes, you weren’t answering me. I thought you were dead!” _I’m not, but someone else is_ , he thinks morbidly. “I’ve got the data on the USB, just get to Blue,” Lance continues.

Keith rounds a corner and sees the room open up into the cathedral-sized bay area where they surfaced. On the floor is what looks like a swimming pool the size of ten football fields, but Keith knows that it's an entrance back into the ocean. In the distance is the Blue Lion, which usually towers over other structures but here is dwarfed by the docked submarines, all in the same dark metal that Galran vessels are made out of. He can see it getting closer and longs for the reprieve of sliding light-gray doors. He wants to pass out on his bed in the castle right now. 

“Okay,” Keith hears Lance say into his helmet, “I see you running towards me. Holy - Keith, I thought you finished them all off!” In his shock, he had forgotten to tell Lance that there were new pursuers.

Keith wheels around. Behind him, the five or six sets of boots have multiplied by two. He pauses and inverses his direction, running sidelong into the pack, breaking off two droids and summoning his bayard to his right hand, summoning his last drops of strength, pouring the dregs from the coffee pot. They shoot at him but he ducks, flying around stacked bins of abandoned cargo and slashing at one’s knees, bringing it down. He lets out a quick puff of relief. He had half been expecting for gouts of blood to come squirting out of a living artery, or for the droid to cry out in pain. Instead, there was only a small shower of sparks. 

If one is a droid, then the rest of them must be, he convinces himself. This is the comforting thought that lets him bring down three more robotic soldiers, each time listening for any sign of life. He staggers backward, hiding behind some machinery, breathing heavily while the remainder of the soldiers shoot aimlessly at the metal above him. When there's a pause in their fire he peers out between a crack and sees them being mowed down by an invisible gunman. Despite his aching arms and cold-sweat, Keith smiles. Lance always has his six.

“There's one more, I think, but I can’t get a good aim on it because it keeps moving. You’ll have to take it down,” Lance pauses for a second then continues, sounding doubtful. “It doesn’t seem like the rest,”

He’s right. When Keith rises once more to put an end to the droid, there is an unmistakable air of living around the figure. It has multiple blaster wounds like someone shot at it and it kept going despite that - like it had a will to keep going. Droids don’t do that. Droids also don’t rip off their helmets and stare at you with empty yellow eyes, gunless taloned hands shaking at their sides.

“It's not a droid, Lance,”

“Do you need help? No offense, but you’re looking a little shaky out there,” Lance answers. 

“I got him,” Keith says, summoning his bayard and, although limping, carefully approaches the empty-handed Galra soldier. They stand ten feet away from each other, neither one moving. Slowly, the Galra soldier pulls out a long thin knife from a sheath on his belt, it's reminiscent of one used to fillet fish. Keith unsteadily raises his blade and prepares himself as much as he can, getting ready to strike first. He stares at the soldier’s stomach, under all that armor is soft skin full of pumping organs, under all that armor is someone vulnerable. Those yellow eyes may not inspire empathy but they will still squeeze shut when fronted by pain. He’ll have to go for the ankles, he won’t be able to stomach much more than that. 

Right before Keith is about to swallow down his bile and dive for his legs, the soldier lets out, in a booming, spit-flying voice, 

“You murdered Molnev, you gutted him,” The soldier mimes with the knife, and spits out, “Now I will gut you,” Before Keith can make any moves backward, the huge Galra soldier charges at him. It feels like it's happening so very, very slowly. 

Keith’s eyes flit around the scene and see his hulking purple cheeks bouncing as he runs, droplets of glimmering sweat flying from his upper-lip, the slow baring of his sharp teeth. Not like Molnev, though, who he assumes is the Galra soldier that's now dead in a hallway. Not the way that he had smiled up at Keith as if to say, _You must live with this now and I delight in how horrible that will be for you_. This avenging Galra is terrifying in his bared teeth, he’s spewing, _You will die at the exact moment I see fit and that moment is right now and it will be agony_. 

He can’t move. Keith blinks and in a moment the soldier suddenly carries the blown-out pupils of Molnev and Keith looks down at his chest plate and sees the blood pouring out, watches the rivulets of organs unfurl, and can smell the cold air of the hallway. The figure reaches a frozen Keith, bayard lowered, gripped tightly at his side but rather in the way a child holds their mother’s hand while crossing the street. He takes hold of Keith’s shoulder and, staring into the soldier's eyes, all he can see is the thin ring of orange, the sticky violet hair, and chrome-clad hand gripping his right wrist like molten steel, hissing,

_Look. Look_. He feels the thin blade enter below his navel, where the hair starts to swirl _up, up, up_ , and as it curls upward his strength gives out. 

His bayard clattering to the floor, still streaked in Molnev’s dried blood, Keith collapses into the Galra soldier who has his knife in him. He can hear Lance screaming into his ear, seeming nearer than just in his helmet, seeming garbled. Keith’s face slips off his face, he careens off the world. It feels like an embrace. It feels like the bathtub is full and he is finally dunking his head under. 

_________________________

It is only with snippets of consciousness that Keith feels the being dragged, does he hear the wet sobs, does he feel the cool metal underneath him. Someone takes off his helmet gingerly and, with shaking hands, softens the area under his head with fabric. He feels those shaking hands touch the deep wound on his stomach and suddenly he is Molnev and staring mercilessly down at him is himself. A white-hot pain sears at the flesh of his stomach and he cries out, feeling both cold and stiff but also like he’s spilling. A hand comes to his shoulder, gripping him tight, holding him down. A voice is talking to him but he can hardly hear it behind the pain. 

He blacks out.

_________________________

“-had to cauterize it! He was bleeding out for fuck’s sake, Allura!” Comes an angry and pleading voice.

“I understand you’re upset, Lance, but you need to focus on getting his armor off right now, we need to get him into a healing pod immediately. We can discuss hypotheticals later,” 

He feels two pairs of hands groping at his body, hears the clicks of his armor snapping off, feels his flight suit peeling down, down, down, until it snags on the partially dried blood at his stomach wound. Keith groans and tries to lift a hand to stop the foreign intruders.

“Shh, shh,” He hears someone hush him like they would a fussy baby and put a palm to his cheek, not realizing that _shh_ was Molnev. _Shh_ was the quiet recognition between two individuals who are now attached, sewn together chest and abdomen. He leans into the palm.

“We’ll have to rip it off in one go,” An accented voice notes wearily, “Oh, Keith, I’m so sorry,” At once there's a sharp tug and Keith arches his back at the blinding sensation, not caring what sounds of anguish come out of his mouth. _Please just let it end, let me pass out,_ He thinks. 

_________________________

Being in the pod had been a sweet and quiet dream. Although it's chilly and surely frost grew in Keith’s hair, it was nice to not exist for a while. The cold is how he imagined a snow-day might feel had he grown up in a place with snow: like having your body held in a few feet of fresh powder, white snowflakes dancing down to rest on your jacket, your form cradled in dry comfort, a warm gloved hand taking yours and pulling you up. 

If being unconscious in the pod was flurry-filled snow days, then toppling out of it was the overcast and slightly warmer day afterward. The type of weather when the snow gets all slushy and blackened on the side of the road, when the de-icing salt crunches under your footsteps, and mushy wads of receipts litter convenience store parking lots. 

Keith falls into the familiar broad chest he’s known since he was thirteen and stays there, keeping his arms at his sides, feeling just as young and vulnerable again. Shiro pats Keith's back in a brotherly manner for a few seconds, murmuring something like, “Good to have you back, buddy,” then motions to end their embrace. Keith allows it and turns towards the three others who are standing in the middle of the room, looking at him expectantly. 

Hunk immediately rushes over and crushes him in a large hug. He soon releases him, as if remembering that Keith’s skin is molten, and takes a step back. His eyes tear up a little,

“Thank God, man, we thought you were lunch-meat,” Hunk cries out.

“Yes, Number Four, you were about as close to death as a flying Scuphrel trying to harvest stinksap from Jerulean moth cocoons!” Coran peers around Keith into the healing pod skeptically, “I suppose these could use a good washing-up now as well,”

While Allura hurriedly scolds Coran for being “quite insensitive”, Keith turns to look and notices that there is a small puddle of slowly thawing blood on the floor of the pod. Peering down at the wound on his stomach he notices that it had bled through the white healing suit, down his leg, and onto the floor. The bottom of his foot feels sticky. Yet, when he turns his gaze back to the scarlet ellipse in the pod, he finds himself not wanting to wash it away. That blood is a mark that he was there; ever since he’s toppled out of the pod he’s felt permeable, translucent, not all-the-way there. 

Keith feels a soft hand rest on his shoulder and turns toward Allura. 

“We’re just glad you’re safe, Keith,” She says comfortingly with a small smile, keeping the arm’s length between them. Keith notices that her dark brown skin, usually glowing with life, looks pallid. Her cheery blue eyes are strained, the whites slightly red, like she’s been awake a long time. She sees Keith notice this and drops her hand.

“Yes, I had to perform some of the preliminary healing myself. It was-” She pauses and lets out a shuddering breath, looking down at her open palms, “It was very bad. The chances of your survival without magic would have been slim. Although it likely saved you from fatal blood-loss, Lance’s cauterizing caused your body to go into some sort of shock,” Allura looks up at him as if asking forgiveness.

“Lance,” Keith croaks out, his voice still stiff from the cold and disuse, “Where is he?” He looks around the room, toward the entrances on either side, as if he’ll come strolling through at any moment. The three of them exchange looks.

“What is it?” Keith demands. Already the deepest, most anxious parts of his mind are creating scenes of Lance’s throat being cut with the fillet knife, of him bleeding out in that underwater base all alone. A terrifying image pops into his mind of Lance’s bloated body, drained of blood, floating onto the icy shores of Habinthe. Shiro seems to notice where Keith’s mind is going and steps in to reassure him,

“Don’t worry, he made it back okay, a few scratches, but okay. He was waiting for you to come out for a day, but now he’s been cleaning out his lion for the past-”

“Forty-eight hours, Keith!” Hunk interrupts. “I’m worried about him, he hasn’t told us anything! He just dragged you out of his lion, ” He hesitates, looking a little green, “practically _holding your guts in_ and gave Pidge the USB stick. He just said you were stabbed,”

Keith turns away from Hunk’s pleading eyes and walks toward an exit. He needs to see Lance, needs to know.

“Well, there's not much more to say, honestly,” Keith concedes. Ignoring, of course, the head of the soldier he killed rising from the horizon of his mind like the sun. His mind burns with the glowing halo of Molnev’s eyes, the phantom icy grip on his arm like a brand. Keith rubs his wrist absentmindedly. 

“Keith? Keith!” Hunk calls after him, “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to go take a nap,” He answers over his shoulder. He hears Allura call out to him,

“Pidge has been working tirelessly in the lab to decrypt and map the information you brought back. I’m sure she would love to see you alive and walking around first, Keith,”

Keith keeps walking, reaching the sliding door, letting it swallow him as he walks through. As it slides shut behind him, he walks faster and faster. The light-gray walls of the castle which he had yearned for so desperately before now feel like a too-small shirt. He is a mouse banging his way through the air ducts toward the scent of salvation. He flies past the lab, where he can hear Pidge clacking away, past the kitchen, past the team’s bedrooms, finally reaching the elevator that takes you to the lion bay. He jams his thumb into the button, then when it doesn’t come he pushes it again and again until he finally punches it, knuckles and all, not even making a dent in the metal. He curses and cradles his hand, the knuckles glowing red with a coming bruise.

God, maybe he is fading - spilling - if he can’t even punch a damn hole in the wall anymore. 

The elevator arrives a second later with a mocking ding.

Keith steps out into the lion bay a few moments later and is immediately reminded of the cathedral-sized submarine room, of the icy water lapping at the edges of his mind as the knife slides through the flesh of his stomach. He looks down and watches Molnev get dragged around a corner by himself, a long trail of oozing red blood following him like bread crumbs - _Stop, stop imagining things that never happened_. Keith breathes fully and deeply for the first time in his life - because that's what this is. There is only before Molnev and after him; Keith was conceived in the submerged hallway, reborn this morning. 

This would be the first time that his mind, like the large spikes that protect doomed adventurers from radioactive waste on Earth, would attempt to eviscerate violent thoughts. 

There, tucked between the Red Lion and the Yellow Lion, is Blue. She is a humming sarcophagus. When Keith approaches her, the ramp up through her mouth slides open willingly and his bare feet slap against the metal as he trudges upward. Once outside the doors to the cockpit, Keith hesitates. What if Lance doesn’t want to see him? What if now that Keith has ended someone, had _ended it_ , he wouldn’t be able to bear to look at him anymore. He’s probably just up here scraping away every last putrid drop of disgusting Keith, murderer Keith, un-altruistic and unfit for Voltron Keith. 

_But then_ , the small reasonable part of his brain asks, the part that isn’t impulsive, that doesn’t jump to the worst conclusion as fast as possible, _how could he know? How could he possibly know?_

No one had been there with him. Besides the one Galran soldier among all those dead droids who had butchered Keith, who he assumes Lance knocked-out in turn, no one knew. _Unless Lance heard what he said,_ Keith reminds himself. It was practically a war cry for the avenging Galra soldier to announce the irreversible act that Keith had performed. He shifts in the semi-darkness that lies between the closed hatch to the outside and the closed door to the cockpit, feeling naked in his healing suit. He breathes deeply for the second time and pushes the button to open the sliding doors. 

Lance is sitting with his back pressed against the pilot seat, his legs in an unfolded criss-cross position, his head lilting down over his open and filthy palms. He might have been sleeping. He might have been praying. There's a large basin of cloudy pink water beside him and a soapy scrub brush with stiff bristles rests mid-scrub by his foot. Keith gets the sudden image of Lance on his hands and knees like Cinderella, scrubbing down wooden floors and begging his evil step-mother to let him go to the ball. He almost laughs at the absurdity of it. 

In the middle of the floor, there's a dark spot that looks like it's been scrubbed heavily. 

Keith points to it, “Is that where you put me?” He asks, Lance’s head springing up immediately, his face cracking open into a toothy smile. 

“Keith,” Lance breathes out in relief. He gets to his feet and crosses the room in a few long strides and wraps him in a hug. His arms are strong and steady against Keith, making him feel grounded. Keith thinks he’s been hugged more today than in the last two years of his life combined. He rests his head against Lance’s shoulder, feeling all the points where his long fingers splay against his back, feeling them prickle. Keith’s eyes fall shut and he is in his armor, feeling his life pour out of him onto the dark metal floor of the submarine room, his cheek pressing into the sweaty shoulder of the avenging Galra soldier and the knife sliding through his skin. _Stop_. Keith’s body seizes a bit. He hopes that Lance doesn’t notice. Lance lets go and steps back, the image immediately fading away. 

He moves to stand to the right of Keith, joining him in staring at the same spot that he has been since he stepped into the room.

“Yeah,” Lance laughs a little, then the smile slides off his face, “Yeah, that's where you were. I was able to scrub the ramp and the hallway clean, but that spot just won’t disappear,” 

The blot is like a police outline in chalk at a murder scene. 

“That’s how I feel,” Keith finally answers as the silence stretches on, “Scrubbed clean, barely there,” He continues in a murmur, and is surprised that he says it. Never has he been so vulnerable with Lance, never has he laid himself so bear with anyone. How different Keith feels now, after everything. Their bickering in the hallway almost makes Keith cringe at its inanity. 

He looks at Lance and finds he’s already staring at him, the crease between his eyebrows that is usually reserved for concern for a loved one, for a friend, is on full display. Is that what they are now? Friends, loved ones, ones once loved but never pursued due to an untimely death? 

“What happened back on Habinthe, Keith?” Lance questions softly. He longs to put the wall back up, the electric fence that is usually between them. The bricks that surround Keith that Lance has been knocking down lately are still salvageable. But wouldn’t it be nice to be seen? _Seen_. Molnev clutching his wrist with his dying strength and saying, _Look, Look._

Keith takes an unsteady breath and steps away from Lance, folding his arms in front of him. 

“I got stabbed,” He throws over his shoulder at Lance. Keith can feel his eye roll from a few feet away, it's a six on the Richter scale and makes the soapy basin of pink water vibrate slightly to the left.

“I mean,” Lance continues, putting special emphasis on his words now, “ _Why_ did that Galra guy stab you? In all the months that we’ve been up here, I’ve never seen a Galra soldier draw a knife on anyone,”

“What about the Blade of Marmora?” Keith deflects, standing even farther from Lance now. It's seven on the Richter this time and Keith swears he sees some of the water slosh out onto the floor. _Spilling_.

“ _Besides_ them. Hell, the knife that guy drew looked like one my dad would’ve used to gut a fish,” Lance pauses, waiting for Keith to engage. When he doesn’t, he continues, “It seemed personal, the way that he made that proclamation and held you as you bled out. Like he was...like he was cradling you,” Lance gets quieter and quieter as he speaks. 

“Proclamation?” Keith asks vaguely, ignoring the reference toward their own ventures in cradling, turning his head to the side a little, hoping to see Lance behind him. “What did he say?” He means to ask this in the most innocent way possible, to glean how much Lance knows.

“I-” Lance hesitates, he sounds suspicious, “I didn’t hear him, I was far away, on top of Blue picking off the droids,” Keith breaths out through his nose a little and turns to face Lance once more. “You didn’t hear him? You were right there,”

“I must have forgotten after passing out,” _You gutted him_. “Allura told me you tried to cauterize the wound?” Keith offers. Lance looks hesitant but lets him change the subject, his ears growing pink.

“You were bleeding so much, Keith. I don’t think you get it,” 

“Yeah, Hunk said you were practically holding my guts in,” Keith says, and tries for a small grin, “So thank you for that. How did you do it?”

Lance nods and walks over to the compartment at the back of the cockpit. He pops open a small panel and pulls out a tool that resembles a bulky pen that's attached to the wall by a long coil of wire.

“I discovered this when I was screwing around in Blue one day,” Lance starts, turning the pen over in his hands, “It's sort of like soldering electrical stuff back together on Earth, but instead of metal it just releases heat. So when you were twitching around on my floor I figured,” He smiles a bit as he says this but there’s fear behind his eyes, “I’d just crank this baby up to eleven and see what happens,”

It’s a terrifying image, but one that comes to Keith’s mind easily: Lance’s tired arms struggling to drag him up into Blue, himself heaving on the floor, black flight suit ripped on his stomach where the entrance wound was, broken nose covered in dry blood from where Molnev had bashed him with his gun. He can imagine Lance pressing down on the gushing wound with shaking hands, trying to staunch the bleeding, holding him down while he struggled, looking around in a panic, warring with himself about whether it was worth trying to cauterize it. Lance: startlingly and horrifyingly alone with Keith white and sweaty on the floor.

His eyes are heavy as he re-coils the not-soldering pen, tucks it inside, and clicks the panel shut. He steps into Keith’s space. He’s so close, Keith can feel his eyes burning into him; he is an ant on the sidewalk, and Lance’s eyes are magnifying glasses. The magnifying glasses flick down to Keith’s stomach then back up to his eyes again, his teeth gnawing on his bottom lip nervously. 

Keith’s hand travels to his own clothed abdomen, feeling the warm and uneven skin below his belly-button, and traces it up to the space just below his ribs. After all the jagged cutting and the hasty cauterizing, there must be a nasty scar there, even with Allura’s Altean healing magic and the frosty cell-regrowth in the healing pod. All at once, he wishes he were as far away from Lance as possible. 

“I should go,” He tells the floor. “I need to wash this all off, maybe put on some shoes,” He gestures to the flecks of dried blood that cling to his bare feet and face. The healing pods don’t cleanse as well as they stimulate cell growth.

“Yeah, I wasn’t gonna say anything but you stink pretty bad,” Lance jokes, fanning his nose, then gestures back to the basin, “Just let me dry the floor off and grab that, we can walk together,”

“No,” Keith hurriedly says, backing away toward the door. He opens it and is half-way out already as he explains, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll be really bad company-” But he swishes the door closed over Lance’s bewildered and hurt face before he finishes and rushes down the ramp as fast as possible, exhaling heavily. 

He needs to get away from all of it: from Lance’s open smile and his halo of hair and the impulse Keith had to tell him everything. _I killed someone and I don’t know how to act around myself. Or you_. Leaving the lion bay, he feels skinned raw.

As the door to the elevator opens to the hallway with the team’s rooms, a mess of blonde hair barrels into Keith, slamming into his collar bone. He stumbles back, surprised out of his muddy thoughts, and finds the person is already blabbering away into his chest.

“-and I was just sitting there! Typing on my stupid computer - I can’t believe it, you could have _died_ and I didn’t even say goodbye -”

“Pidge, calm down, I’m okay now. Don’t worry about it, seriously,” Keith tries to console her, finally bringing his arms up to pat her back a few times. They had never hugged before. Keith had no idea his safety even mattered to the green paladin so much. 

“‘Don’t worry about it’? Dude, I’m the one who sent you two idiots into that mess! I should have realized that the biorhythm scanner in Blue needed to be recalibrated to compensate for the high pressure and density that deep underwater on Habinthe,” She releases him and straightens her glasses, donning a grim expression, “it’s my fault you two went in there blind,” 

She doesn’t say that it's her fault Keith almost bled to death, but she doesn’t need to, the guilt is pouring off of her in droves. Keith’s own guilt bubbles and boils. It had really been his own damn fault that he had been stabbed. _If I hadn’t...If I hadn’t…_ He attempts to say something comforting through his muddled state. 

“I don’t blame you at all, Pidge, and I know Lance doesn’t either,” He tries to smile. Pidge seems a little sated but she shakes her head.

“Still. I should have noticed,” She insists. Pidge is the smartest person Keith knows, he doesn’t understand how she could ever pin this on herself. He tries again,

“It was our own fault, really. We weren’t even paying attention, just arguing. Ask Lance, he’ll say the same thing,” He tries to change the subject for her benefit, “Did you find anything useful in the data we brought back?”

Pidge brightens at this, “Oh yeah, totally. We’re gonna go over it in a briefing later but let me just say, there was some really interesting stuff on mining colonies in that base. And yeah, I was actually on my way down to Blue,” Keith cocks his head, he had told the others he was going to bed. Pidge notices his confusion and smiles,

“After you didn’t answer your bedroom door I figured you were probably down there with him,” She explains.

“I was. I just came back up to take a shower,”

“Thank God. You reek, Keith,” Pidge says with a grin, pressing the button in the elevator for the lion bay.

“So I’ve been told,” Keith huffs, “See you later, Pidge,” As he turns down the hallway he hears a shrill “Bye!” through the almost closed elevator door behind him. 

_Finally_. He likes Pidge and is glad she doesn’t feel so guilty anymore but God, he feels like he’s about to fall apart. He rubs at his wrist and starts toward the showers.

Keith’s inky hair is dripping onto the floor of his bathroom, his bare torso dotted with drops of water. He holds a towel around his hips and prods at his new scar lightly in the mirror. It emits a dull pain when he touches it, but he presses down on it with two fingers and traces a curve anyway. It still pulses hot.

He had been right, it was ugly. The line below his belly-button where the knife had sunk in smoothly was clean, but as it curved to the right and streaked up, it grew ragged, the new skin stretching over it in uneven bumps. The backward L-shaped cut had mutilated the area where the black baby hairs flourish up his lower-belly and swirl around his navel. It matches perfectly with the one on his left shoulder from his introduction to the Blade. 

He turns his leg around in the mirror, stretching to check the soft area on the back of his right knee for any sign of the blaster shot that had hit him point-blank. It looks free of scarring in the mirror, but when he rubs a cautious finger over it he can feel a slight depression. The place where he was burned on his shoulder is free from any permanent damage, so is his face. _Or is it?_ Keith steps closer to the mirror and squints, pressing his fingers to the sides of his nose, testing its tenderness, and trying to see if it healed correctly. Had it always been this crooked, or had Molnev left his mark there, too? He remembers standing in the hallway afterward, looking down at his corpse and cataloging every sodden bit of him: violet hair? _Check_. Open and blown-out eyes? _Check_. The ghost of his toothy smile still etched into his leathery skin, gloved hand getting soaked in the blood pooling in his lap, the sharp metal curving inward through his armor where Keith’s sword had been, reminding him of an open tin of tuna? _Check, check, check._ He drops his hands and steps out of the small bathroom, flicking the light off behind him. 

Keith paces his room, pulling on underwear and pants, sliding a shirt over his wet head. He feels even lighter now that he's clean - like he might accidentally walk through the wall and not even notice. All the stink and grime that had bookmarked him as existing in the particular moment of the murder, of his almost-murder, is gone. 

He spends the rest of the afternoon in his room, dozing off intermittently and stretching his body out, trying to get rid of the tension that seems molded into his shoulders and legs. He scrubs at his fingernails and washes his face until he's so squeaky and dry he just knows that Lance will call him out on it. He sits on his bed and reads through their data archives on his tablet, finds out that Habinthe is thawing out of its second ice-age; in a few hundred thousand years the land will be lush again and the Galra base will have been weathered away by the water beating against it. The metal of the sentries and the walls, the leviathan submarines, the bodies of Molnev and the avenging soldier - all of it will be minuscule bits of sand on new beaches. No one will remember him or the Galra empire then. The thought is comforting. 

At some point he hears Coran call the paladins to the bridge over the intercom, he guesses it's to go over the data he and Lance had retrieved. He ignores it and leans back down against his bed, scrolling aimlessly through charts of weather patterns and biographies for political leaders that are long dead, having been even in King Alfor’s day. Usually, the mission would come first for Keith, usually, he would jump at the opportunity for a fight, for a distraction. Now, though, all he wants to do is be alone - he deserves at least that, at least for a day.

The others must think so too because no one comes knocking to demand he make an appearance. It somehow makes him feel worse, then he feels angry for feeling worse: he should be able to keep this all in, he should just be able to deal with this on his own. He throws his tablet across his bed and it lands with a soft _thwump_ on the messy covers. He pulls out his luxite dagger and unsheathes it, appreciating its glinting edge in the low blue light, his eyes are dark in the reflection. 

A long while later a knock does sound on his bedroom door. He slowly rises and presses the button, letting it slide open. Shiro’s shoulders take up half the doorway and in his hands he holds a bowl of food-goo, a spoon sunk into it. His expression is serious yet kind - confident. Keith steps aside to let him in and the door swishes shut.

“I brought you something to eat,” Shiro says and offers the bowl to Keith, who takes it and sits back down on his bed, “Figured you’d be hungry after three days of being cryogenically frozen,” 

“Yeah, I am. Thanks,” Keith answers, eating a spoonful. He chews and swallows in silence for a few minutes while Shiro leans against the wall, his arms folded like he’s trying to think of what to say. Keith is okay with that, it's better if he doesn’t talk. He’s dreading being pried open like Shiro always seems to know how to do. 

“You probably know I didn’t just come here to bring you food,” He starts. Keith exhales lightly, the spell broken. He sets the almost empty bowl on the floor and pushes himself into the corner of his bed, leaning against the wall. 

“I figured,” He says dryly.

“Lance told us what happened at the mining base on Habinthe. That you weren’t expecting it, but that you two ran into some active sentries, that you two had to split up, and while he looked for the information hub you drew them away. Lance said that he was almost overrun while he downloaded the files, but that he eventually made it back to Blue,” Keith finally meets Shiro’s eyes when he says this. Another layer of guilt burns in his chest - all this time he had been so caught up in his own sob story, he didn’t even consider that something might’ve happened to Lance on Habinthe too. If he had just followed Lance back in the hallway they could have been dealing with this pain together. Maybe they still can. 

“Only, you weren’t there. He said you didn’t answer his calls for _ten minutes_ , Keith. And when you finally did come back there were even more sentries on you,” He pauses and furrows his eyebrows, his lips turning down in a slight frown. Shiro looks older with the dim shadows taking advantage of the creases in his face. 

“That's a normal thing that happens, Shiro. Things don’t always go the way you plan them,” Keith deflects. Shiro nods and drops his arms, walking over to Keith’s bed and settling onto the edge of it. 

“This wasn’t a normal mission for you though, I can tell. And I’m just wondering why so that I can help you. I don’t want this to affect you or the team in the long-term,” Keith turns away and stares at the wall. Shiro sighs. 

“Hunk hadn’t been exaggerating when he said Lance was holding your guts in. There was a portion of your back where the sword went all the way through. Keith,” Shiro insists, sounding like he’s trying very hard to get his point across, “It missed hitting your spinal cord by a millimeter. That feels pretty personal, Keith,” 

He wishes Shiro would stop saying his name so much, quit insisting that he exists when he feels like he could melt into the wall right now. He tries not to think of the knife sliding between his vertebrae, popping two of them apart like a bottle opener to a beer. 

“It wasn’t a sword,” Keith says to the wall, then flicks his eyes over to Shiro.

“What do you mean?”

“It was a knife,” Even just this small piece of information feels like a confession to Keith. He knows Shiro has killed countless individuals, that he had been forced to when he was a prisoner of war, but he doesn’t want to admit himself to him. Even though he deeply trusts Shiro, he doesn’t want to let anything slip. _This_ hadn’t been for a noble reason, _this_ hadn’t been to save a friend or an innocent - _This_ had been a product of Keith’s anger and he had enjoyed the act of it. 

“The knife, then. It still could have paralyzed you, or worse,” Shiro replies, “So I just want to know why so we can stop this from happening again,” _I just want to know what_ you _did, Keith, to anger someone into doing this_ , is what Shiro doesn’t say but is still present and stinging in the air. Keith slides his legs up to his chest, hugging them, and rests his chin on his folded arms. 

When Keith doesn’t answer Shiro sighs, “I understand that whatever happened affected you, but I don’t want it to affect you forever. If you’re not going to talk to me about it, that's fine, but talk to someone. I know you don’t always love to be around Lance, but I’m sure you two could find some common ground here,” He rises and, grabbing the bowl from the floor, moves to leave. Keith hears the door swish open.

“I expect to see you at breakfast tomorrow morning. You’ve got to get back in the swing of things,” Keith nods and hears the door close. 

The next morning Keith’s whole body thuds in a dull ache. He flops over onto his stomach and buries his face into his pillow, trying to will the lights off. Nonetheless, not wanting to tempt the depth of Shiro’s sympathy for him, he drags his sore soul out of bed. 

He gets dressed slowly, clipping his belt over his hips and pushing his feet into his boots. It's only when he goes to pull his jacket on that he pauses. He stares at his pallid face through the doorway into the mirror of the little bathroom, his hands pull his hair out from under the collar. He drags his fingers through it absentmindedly, slowly, transfixed on his reflection. The leather bunches around his shoulders in a way that feels new and strange; the worn-in fiber, which is usually flexible in his movements, feels stiff. He feels wrong, silly even, wearing it now; like when he was a little kid wearing his dad’s firefighter overalls around the house. 

Then and now. Before and after. He slides it off and folds it, tucking it tenderly under his pillow. It's emotional, it's another thing to mourn on top of it all. 

He creeps into the dining room and is greeted with the sleep-crusted faces of three other paladins. Pidge’s hair is sticking up like she slept on one side of it and is rubbing her eyes incessantly under her glasses, yawning, Lance has his forehead pressed against the table, his limp hand half-heartedly clutching a cup of juice, and Shiro sits between them, flipping the pages of a book. He looks like he’s enjoying the “early-morning quiet”, as he used to tell Keith. Even so, the bags under his eyes are a bit more pronounced, the shock of white hair sitting atop the mess of black is untidy. None of them notice him entering or sliding into a chair at the end of the table. 

Hunk traipses in from the kitchen blearily, holding bowls of goo in his arms and setting them down on the table.

“Good morning,” He says through a yawn, sliding the bowls down to everyone. Lance’s bumps into his arm and wakes him up. 

“Thanks, Hunk,” Lance says, looking distastefully down at his food, “Looks especially green today,” Hunk collapses into a chair, even he looks hesitant to eat it. Keith decides to rip off the bandage of being noticed himself. 

“What's got you guys so tired?” Keith inquires wearily. The four of them look up, noticing him, but it's Lance that answers his question. 

“We were up all night in a meeting with alien diplomats. Allura made us all sit there for hours while she and Shiro talked about carbon deposits and mining bases and other boring stuff,” Lance groans.

“‘The paladins of Voltron must appear knowledgeable and engaged with all current issues. I don’t give a damn whether you’re being eaten by a winged Snorfolax, you three stay where you are’.” Pidge mocks, wagging a finger around in an excellent imitation of Allura’s accent, “She even used a word I taught her. I want to feel proud but I’m too tired to,” She rests her head back on her hand defeatedly.

“Yeah, pretty easy for her to say when she doesn’t have to deal with Shiro’s drills so early in the morning,” Hunk complains, mushing his spoon into his goo.

Shiro, seeming to have finally accepted that the “early-morning quiet” is over, snaps his book shut and sets it to the side. 

“Paladins, I know that we're all tired from last night but we’ve got a full day of training ahead of us,” He explains, putting on his uplifting ‘Professor Shirogane’ voice, despite how tired even he looks,  
“This morning we’ll be doing some in-flight drills because some of our formations are getting a little sloppy, and then after lunch, we’ll do hand-to-hand. Finish your breakfast then suit up - we’ll meet on the bridge in twenty,” 

He slides his book off the table and starts to leave. As he reaches Keith he stops and, placing a hand on his shoulder, looks down at him warmly. 

“It’s good to have you back, Keith,” He says, patting his shoulder, then heads off. 

In the ‘locker room’, or rather the room where they keep their flight suits, armor, and bayards on the occasion they’re not in combat, Keith dresses quickly and silently. He can feel the other’s curious eyes on him while he strips off his shirt. He turns and, hiding his scar from view, pulls the shirt of his flight suit over his head. He rubs the spot where the giant rip in the fabric had been, this new one is whole and shiny. His armor isn't, though. When he clicks his chest plate into place he spies the scratches from the last few months and, over the place where his nose had been dripping, a few chips of dried blood are still glued to it. 

He hovers his hand over his hip and calls up his bayard for the first time since Habinthe. It forms into the familiar black and red monolith - razor sharp. It's clean. Did someone clean it while he was passed out, or does Altean magic take care of impurities naturally? Keith blanches at the idea of someone else wiping Molnev’s blood off his bayard; that feels intimate, that feels like someone had seen him stick his sword in, had seen him pull it out, had _seen him_ in some other way than just with their eyes. He puts a hand to the Voltron insignia on his chest plate and wonders who it had been. 

The morning consists of first warm-ups, where they all get the feel of flying again. In their empty sector of space with nothing to shoot at, Shiro has them chase each other around in figure-eights, dodging fire from the castle. Keith tries to let his mind go blank and surrender to the rhythm of the exercise, tries to use it as an outlet. Red purrs as he accelerates, something that she always does and Keith usually returns by opening up his mind to her. Today, though, he shuts her out. Because of this, as the morning goes on she resists his steering more and more, and he gets more and more frustrated. It's a relief when Shiro tells them it's finally time to return inside for lunch. As he leaves the lion bay all that Red can spit into his mind is _good riddance_. It's another stab of guilt to his gut. 

After their quick meal, the paladins, now accompanied by Allura, make their way to the training deck. 

“Due to the recent near-death experience of a certain paladin,” Six pairs of eyes bore into Keith, who shrivels. “it has come to my attention that, aside from Keith, most of you are not experienced in the art of swordplay,” Allura explains, “Shiro, the swords please,” Shiro holds out a large tube full of clattering swords and Allura draws one out gracefully. It is blue and white and much longer and thinner than Keith’s own blade. 

“This is an Altean Broadsword,” She explains, “I fought with them quite often in my father’s day, they are the royal weapon of Altea. For those of you who’s bayards do not form a blade of some kind, you will be using these,” She takes the container from Shiro and rattles it at them expectantly, “Go on, take one. Lance, Hunk, Shiro,” 

They all pull identical broadswords out, each of them looking odd with the long blades. Hunk looks uncertain as he swings it a few times, while Lance appears confident; it may as well be an extension of his already lithe, strong arms. Shiro grips his own and looks to Allura for more instructions. 

“I will be placing each of you in pairs and, because there are only five paladins, I will participate as well,” She taps a finger to her chin, thinking, “I’ve got it. Hunk, you are with Lance, Pidge, you will be with Keith, and Shiro and I will be together,”

Keith looks over at Pidge, she's trading envious glances with Lance. 

“Go to a corner and begin, off you go,” Allura shoos them. Keith strides over to Pidge. He had been hoping to be paired with Shiro, who’s fighting style is familiar and who’s inexperience with a blade might earn Keith a more leisurely afternoon. Pidge, on the other hand, is well-practiced with her small electrifying dagger. He holds a hand out for her to shake,

“Promise you’ll go easy on me?” He jokes. She grins and takes his hand with vigor.

“No promises Lunchmeat,” She taunts. He raises his eyebrows in mock offense but smiles. They walk over to the far corner of the large room.

“Wow, Tinkerbell, a low blow to make fun of a man’s deformity,”

She dons a determined expression, spreading her legs and bending her knees, raising her bayard into an attack position. 

Used to being the smaller, more agile opponent, Keith runs toward her. She rolls out of the way with ease. Feeling fiercer, he advances on Pidge with force, but she dodges out of his way again and the amount of strength he had put into his missed blow throws him off balance. He stumbles but swiftly regains his composure. He keeps going head-on for the littlest paladin, charging at her with all his strength, but, as he refuses to acknowledge, he doesn’t have the upper hand in this match. As they fight, she is like a little mosquito buzzing around his head, delivering small electrical shocks in his open spots

With mounting difficulty, he rises from the floor, he’s just been delivered another blow. Across the room, he can see Hunk and Lance laughing as they play joust with their broadswords. He imagines that Shiro and Allura are fighting in a similar manner somewhere beyond his scope of vision.  
He turns on his heel and brandishes his bayard, running towards her again, all humor gone from his face. He feels a yell of frustration rip out of his throat. He lunges for her but she skillfully blocks his sword with her bayard, paries, then lands an electrifying blow to his raw stomach. He stumbles backward and clutches his throbbing scar, panting. 

“Getting tired yet, Lunchmeat?” Pidge taunts, grinning devilishly. He tries to smile but, yeah, he is getting pretty effing tired. He wipes his upper lip with the back of his hand.

She sprints toward him again and, as he thrusts his sword forward to strike her, she dives to the floor in a slide. She wraps herself around his legs and he falls to the ground. She crawls and sits on top of him, pointing her bayard downward and panting, smirking victoriously. She’s about to bring it down on his neck, or so Keith thinks, when he blinks and his heart starts racing with icy panic: above him, weighing down on his hips with near crushing weight, is Molnev. 

He is smiling in that terrifying teeth-bearing way and a long coil of intestines is slipping out of his open stomach, sending a metallic scent into the air. The bright halo of orange, so removed and opposite from Lance’s halo of hair, peers down at him. He is clutching the downward-turned silver fillet knife and is about to slip it in when Keith’s adrenaline kicks in. He grabs the blade with his gloved hand, feels it press through the fabric, and somewhere far away in his brain he feels it send a shock down his arm bone. He topples Molnev over and pins him to the ground, chucking the knife away. His warm, thick blood is spurting wildly over Keith’s face. He presses the tip of his sword to his leathery purple cheek, matches his panting with the Galra soldier, who stares up at him and breathes out

“ _Look. Look,_ ” Keith shakes and lets a roar tear from his throat and is about to sink the blade into his brain when he feels himself get shoved off him. His bayard clatters away as he hits the ground. 

Blinking blearily as if waking up from a nightmare, Keith sits up. On the floor in shock, is Pidge. She takes two fingers away from her face and they’re spotted in blood. There's a knick on the apple of her cheek from where... from where _Keith had pressed his sword_. He feels sick. He scrambles up and moves toward her to repair the damage he’s done, but Hunk stands over him threateningly. Keith had never thought that Hunk could be scary, but the veins under his thick arms are popping, his dark brown eyes full of fury. 

“What were you _thinking_ , Keith?” He roars. Keith blanches, speechless, his eyes wide and the hot sweat on the back of his neck burning cold.

“I-I-” Is all he can stutter. 

Allura is helping Pidge to her feet, Lance blotting at the blood of her face with his glove.

“You could’ve killed her!” Hunk says, louder this time, stepping toward Keith, who cowers back. 

“I quite agree with Hunk,” Allura adds, leaving Pidge to her own devices after she had swatted her hands away, “That was completely unprofessional, dangerous, and, not to mention, ludicrous!”

Keith’s wide eyes turn to Shiro, begging for him to understand that he didn’t - he didn’t mean to. Shiro’s stern face is all bricked up.

“Shiro. Pidge, I didn’t-” He tries to get out. He has never felt so mute in his life.

“You’re done for the day,” Shiro interrupts firmly, nodding his head toward the exit, “Go sort yourself out,”

Keith nods, wanting to leave anyway. The fear and confusion muddling him together as he walks stiffly out the door and to the locker room. He shucks his armor, peels off his flight suit, and pulls on his normal clothes, not even paying attention to what he’s doing. All he can think is that he must be going insane. It's one thing to have thoughts about terrible, unspeakable things happening, but for him to _see_ them in front of him like they’re real? How can he explain that? Especially without having to tell the truth? He leaves his discarded clothes in his area and flees, walking anywhere, breathing deeply and unsteadily out of his nose. He rubs his wrists. 

Through all the horrible translucidity that he’s been feeling, Molnev on top of him had felt very real. He almost craves his touch, now. Craves the grounding grip that he had laid on his arm and the solidity of his stomach that stopped his sword from going right through it. Keith can’t stop thinking of Pidge dabbing at the blood on her cheek, of her confused face, free of fear, looking over at him. 

He races toward the elevator and gets out at a random floor, looking, looking, finding a door that opens and Keith collapses behind it as it closes.

The Castle of Lions is unintelligibly immense. Most of the bottom half of it is made up of the hangar where the robotic lions are kept, but the rest of it is full of an endless amount of untouched rooms. After all, it had been made to be manned by a full crew. That meant countless sleeping chambers, fancy bathrooms filled with differently scented soaps, closets that take up five rooms and are packed with frilly gowns and traditional alienware and, Keith’s newfound favorite, this room of old, sparkling artifacts. Taking up a whole wall is a window that looks out to space. There are dusty sconces amongst the many armoires, shelves, and tables, casting the whole room in a warm blue glow. 

“Hey man,” Comes a familiar voice from behind. 

Keith turns from where he’s been staring out the window, thinking of the events of the afternoon, his mind feeling like the _Shh_ of the hallway. It's been hours since then, almost dinner time. Lance is standing a safe distance away, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. _He is a friend, a loved one, one once loved but never pursued due to an untimely death, visiting him at the hospital_ , Keith thinks like before. Only this time he isn’t the one who's died, he is the killer. Keith doesn’t answer. He stares at Lance: he is fading away.

“Pidge isn’t mad, you know. She wanted me to tell you that,” Lance starts.

“She should be,” She should be angry and scared and want him out of the castle as soon as possible. “Why didn’t she come to tell me herself?” Keith asks hallowly. At this Lance starts walking around the room, picking things up off the shelves and examining them as he speaks.

“That's a little more complicated. Hunk is pretty angry, Allura too. Pidge keeps trying to explain to them that you just had a flashback or something. Anyway, they said she couldn’t find you until you ‘cooled off’” He shakes his head, “I think more than anything they’re all just really worried, dude,” He puts down a crystal jewelry box he’s been examining and continues walking through the mess of furniture.

“And you?” Keith asks uncertainly. He’s not sure if he could handle Lance’s disgust.

“I…” He stops and peers curiously into a terrarium stacked full of shining spherical crystals. He takes one and rolls it around between his fingers, thinking, “I agree with Pidge. I saw you when she was on top of you. You looked scared, not yourself,” His fingers stall and he stuffs his hands back into his jean pockets, “How do you feel?” 

Keith wants to deflect it, he wants to lie. But then he thinks of how good it had felt to confess that small truth to Lance in Blue, of how honest Lance is being with him now, and decides to gamble away a few more bricks from his wall. He sighs and rubs his wrists.

“Honestly? I feel like I’m going crazy,”

“Not gonna go all Girl, Interrupted on me, are you?” Lance asks with a grin. Keith gives him an annoyed glare. He raises his hands, “Just trying to lighten the mood. So, like you’re anxious or something?” Lance asks. Keith shakes his head, willing away the urge to backpedal.

“No, it's…” He looks around the room for an answer. How do you explain to someone that you have been quietly mourning the life of your murder victim? Someone who tried with all their might to end him, but he had ended them first. How do you say that? Keith’s love and empathy and hatred and yearning for the grounding grip of Molnev are all so confusing that all he feels is translucence. “I saw someone when we were sparring. I saw him and I panicked. It was like I was about to die,” He finally gets out. Lance is looking at him calmly, all jeering gone from his expression.

“Who did you see, Keith? Do you think someone broke into the castle?” Keith shakes his head, why can’t Lance just understand what he’s trying to say without making him say it?

“I didn’t actually _see_ someone. It was,” He pauses. What had it been? A daydream? A hallucination? “It wasn’t real. It was in my head. He was on top of me, he _was_ Pidge,”

Lance breathes out a shuddering breath, “It was the Galra soldier that stabbed you, wasn’t it?” The electric fence between them buzzes in a warning.

Keith turns away, avoiding the question. He could say yes; it would bury the simple truth of what Keith had done, it would absolve him of the guilt that he feels and has been feeling overbearingly since he slid his blade out of Molnev. He could falsely confess to everyone that it was just leftover panic from being stabbed and nothing else. But what if he said no? What would Lance do once he found out what Keith had done? Staring out at the expense of flickering stars he can imagine Lance hating him, would he be able to deal with that? They would eject him out of the ship like Shiro had Sendak. He can see himself pounding against the glass of the airlock, tears running down his face, begging for them to understand what he did, their eyes full of loathing as they press the eject button. He opts for the middle ground: avoidance. 

“I just feel like everything that I know, that I am, keeps changing,” He says, “I used to be so certain about good and evil,” Lance accepts this half-truth of an answer with an understanding nod.

“I get what you mean. Back at the Garrison, when all we were taught was that they were good and anyone else that fought for something different was bad, it was so much easier. And then we got here and, hey, look, turns out every situation has nuance,” He leans in close to a stuffed fish that's mounted on the wall, it's reminiscent of one of those Earth ones that sing when you pull its string. Keith can see Lance war with himself about whether to pull it, but then he continues, “We thought that all Galra were bad, but look at Thace and Kolivan. Look at you,” Lance says this as if he’s spent a lot of time thinking about it. Keith takes a few steps toward him, dodging strewn armchairs and a little card table stacked with board games.

“Yeah,” He breathes.

“It's the feeling of impermanence,” Lance says. He’s eyeing the spot where the scar on Keith’s stomach is in a heavy way: with unmistakable wanting.

“What?” Keith asks. Lance never stops surprising him.

Lance continues more bashfully, stepping away from the mounted fish, and meeting Keith where he stands under an out-of-place crystal chandelier, “I had never thought about it until now. Well, I mean, I _thought_ that I recognized death opposite me every time we went out onto some new alien planet, but I never realized-” He looks down, stumbling on his words, “That was the first time I’ve felt like my existence is conditional,”

He can see what Lance is getting at, but he can’t relate to it being a new feeling. Every day that Keith had meandered the desert in between Shiro’s disappearance and the discovery of the Blue Lion had felt like borrowed time. Living the first ten years of his life with only his father for company, someone who, now, he can only remember snippets of, and then having that taken from him without remorse had humbled all adolescent dreams of being untouchable. There was also his mother, who may as well be dead, and the countless people who he had met, bonded with, and then was thrown-away-by in between his father and Shiro. 

“But you weren’t the one that almost died,” Keith whispers. Lance grimaces and looks down at Keith, meets his eyes with an intense fire behind them.

“It felt like it was,” He says quietly and runs his fingers through his hair, trying to get out the right words, “But also like you were too. When we were in Blue and I was flying back to the castle I kept on looking down at myself, like...it was like I was expecting to see my insides all scrambled. I kept looking back at you on the floor and feeling this pain...” He places a hand on his abdomen.

Keith thinks back to the moment that he finally met Molnev’s gaze. He had understood him, it was like they were conjoined. Had Lance been sewn to Keith for all this time and he hadn’t even realized it?

“Allura is really the one who saved you in the end,” Lance admits. They’re so close now all they have to do is whisper. “I was freaking out so much and she was just...calm. She knew what to do,” Lance understood Keith. They fit together like...like something. Like anything. All of the wild horses in Keith start galloping as Lance bends down toward him.

“You did save me, though. That cauterizing trick, it was smart. You’re smart,” Keith says dumbly. It's barely a whisper. Lance reaches out and places his hand in the dip between Keith’s shoulder and neck; _this is how we fit together_ , he thinks. 

Lance strokes his thumb over the area, twirling a strand of Keith’s loose hair, his mouth curving into a half-moon smile, but his eyes are heavy-lidded and flick around Keith’s face in the dim light. Oh, how he worships that mouth, those lips, those eyes that are deep and blue evening pools of longing. Outwardly, he’s calm and smiles back. Inwardly though, Keith is bouncing off the walls of his brain; all the numbness, all the translucency has seemed to disappear since he placed his hand on him. He doesn’t even feel guilty. Keith, slowly, achingly, starts to reach out to Lance. He means to cup Lance’s face to finally, finally feel his soft skin. Their matched gazes are lighting the air in this room on fire.

“-ance, Lance, where are you?” Comes a crooning voice down the hallway. Keith immediately drops his hand - his fingertips had hardly grazed the curve of his jaw - and is startled backward. Lance holds his arm out where it was for a second, then drops it. Just as he does this the door swishes open and someone pokes their head in. His face is burning red, he can’t meet Lance’s eyes.

“Lance? Ah yes, there you are. You’re needed on the bridge,” Coran says.

“Yeah, okay, in a minute,” Lance says dismissively. Keith can still feel the old magnifying glasses on him but while he keeps his head high, he doesn’t look at Lance. He looks anywhere but Lance and wishes that Lance would stop looking at him, stop _seeing_ him. 

“Right away now, Number Three,” Coran insists. Lance takes one last long look at him, Keith can feel it - he wonders if he’s cataloging him right now like Keith had Molnev - and then sighs and turns around to leave. Still looking intently, blindly, at a shelf stacked with hundreds of tiny glass bottles, he hears the door close behind Lance, hears the retreating footsteps and voices. 

Keith lets out the long, trailing breath that he’s been holding in and collapses down in a squishy armchair that's facing out toward the endless expanse of sky. If anything, Lance’s confidence that he hadn’t been himself brings down Keith’s anxiety levels. When he had first made his way blindly to this room, he was running his hands over his face and torso, sure that Molnev’s blood would come off on them. His whole body had been shaking violently, uncontrollably, and he couldn’t breathe without his muscles clenching like when it gets really cold. He tried desperately to see through his hallucination of Molnev as he paced the room, to blink his eyes and see Pidge instead, but it was no use. The panic, the overwhelming reality of it all was still stuck in Keith’s mind.

Despite everything, he can’t stop the smile that's overtaking his face. _The overwhelming reality of it all_. He touches the area on his left shoulder: it feels like there's a burning scar there matching the one on his right, Lance’s fingertips may as well have scalded holes right through his shirt. He rubs his hand under it, tracing the curve of the scar, then brings his fingers to his lips, touching them in what feels like a prayer. It's good to know that _that_ hadn’t been a hallucination. And it feels verifying that Lance hadn’t been the one to jump away, Lance wasn’t disgusted at the thought of desire, the thought of him. Maybe there could be something there. He remembers the abject longing he had seen in Lance’s face when he drank in Keith’s stomach and decides that next time, hallucinations be damned, he would be the one to press his body against Lance, to make holes smoke and burn in his clothes.

Later that night, when he can no longer ignore the incessant growling of his stomach and Keith is sure that no one is still out of their rooms, he slips out into the hallway, making his way down to the kitchen to scrounge for food. _Girl, Interrupted_ , Keith thinks of that comment Lance had made as he walks around in the dim ‘night’ glow of the castle. Keith guesses that the title Lance had referenced is a movie from his seemingly unending vault of media knowledge, and smiles to himself. They would just have to watch it when they got back to Earth. 

For the first time in what feels like forever, Keith’s journey through the castle is smooth. No running, no rubbing of his wrists, no dread, just the happy web of _Lance_ thoughts building in his mind. As serious as it had been, he doesn’t even think about what he did to Pidge.

Keith turns down the hallway that leads to the kitchen and hears hushed voices echoing across the metal walls. He slows down and sees two figures come into view. It's Lance and Allura. Good, now he and Lance can explain to Allura that he wasn’t a ferocious half-Galra monster, he just hadn’t been himself. It had been a simple mistake, she would understand if it came from both of them.

Except as he gets closer he slows. There is so little space between them as they talk, that if one of them shifted slightly, their foreheads would touch; it's clearly a very intimate moment. He presses himself behind a section of the wall and watches it unfold. Allura is nodding and saying something back to Lance, who has a concerned pinch to his eyebrows. He places his hand on her shoulder, on _her shoulder_ , in that same space that has been prickling all evening but now sputters out and dies - a pin through Keith’s heart, a pin through each of his eyes. Lance pulls her in for a hug. He shrinks back even more.

He wants to flap his arms and run between them, yelling and kicking like he’s destroying a sandcastle at the beach. What had Lance said? _Allura is really the one who saved you in the end...She knew what to do_. Keith hadn’t even noticed the affection that had seeped into his voice when he said that, but he can hear it now, so achingly sweet. Save Keith, sure - she may as well have sunk her nails into the crevice on his stomach and pulled the healed skin apart. It’s Lance that his fury is directed towards, though. Keith had thought… had thought… _Nothing. Nothing._

Keith rushes from his hiding place and pushes them apart.

Except he doesn’t do that.

He sprints to the bridge and rings and rings and rings the emergency alarm, yelling into the intercom.

Only he doesn’t do that either.

He stands there, rock still, pressed against the wall and out of sight from the two. Are they lovers? Have they been this whole time and Keith was just too dense to see it, to understand? His insides burn with embarrassment about how he had acted back in the artifact room, how he had reached out and touched Lance’s face with tender fingertips. Lance’s steadying arm hadn’t been a display of affection, of how they _fit together_ , it had been a sign of comfort from one friend to another, a pitying gesture to an acquaintance who was going insane. 

He watches as they eventually separate, Lance leans in and says something. It makes Allura laugh. God, he had been so stupid. So blind. He pries himself from the wall and backs away, making sure his boots don’t make a sound with each step he takes. Forget the rumbling of his stomach, forget the calm stroll through the Castle of Lions, forget it all. Molnev on top of him had been achingly real, Lance’s warm hand on him too, but both of those turned out to be figments of his imagination. What else is he seeing that isn’t real? He hurries back to his room.

He had told Lance secret things, personal things, he had let Lance see him and, what? He didn’t want it. He didn’t want all of Keith’s sharp angles and sharp words and the sharp point of his sword piercing Pidge’s soft cheek. He wants Allura, who is so effortlessly beautiful and fierce and good, who doesn’t hallucinate the reanimated corpses of the people she’s killed. He can’t even hate her, that's the most frustrating part. As much as he wants to throw darts at the picture of her in his mind, he can’t. She’s an amazing leader and, now that Keith dares to think of it, would be a much safer option for Lance. _Not that I ever_ was _an option_ , Keith thinks bitterly.

“Ugh!” He yells, throwing his stupid luxite blade, which he’s been trying to distract himself by polishing, at the wall. It bounces off and clatters to the floor indifferently. Keith clutches his pounding head, he hates how cloudy his mind is feeling.

He lays down in his bed that night and stares up into the darkness with the covers off. All of the terrible permeability that he felt earlier is gone, boiled down into nothing. He stares and stares into the emptiness and wills for something to strike him. All of the guilt, the bubbling shame starts to rise _up, up, up_ , squeezing out of him like an almost empty tube of toothpaste, so fast he could throw-up. Keith realizes that he is so angry. Where else do I put this grief except into anger? He suddenly wishes that he could go back to feeling translucent - crazy how that keeps happening, how he keeps wishing to go back to certain points that had felt perennial at the time. _Impermanence,_ Lance had whispered. Keith didn’t get it before. He clenches his fists, hoping that his stubby fingernails will somehow pierce the skin of his palms, hoping that someone would just hit him, wishing he could reopen the wound, cut the ties that bind him and Molnev together and just bleed out on his bed like he was supposed to have done in the submarine room. What is this grief but one more jar of sand? What is this anger but another handful of water? 

“Fuck,” Keith breaths, feeling like his body is encased in ice, like he’s paralyzed. 

There is so much aggression he wants to let out. He hates Molnev, he hates Lance for rescuing him, Allura for healing him. He hates how he didn’t see how tied he was to others; there are all these people that he is interlaced between but he can’t untangle one thread without pulling at another and feeling a sharp pain. _Pain,_ Keith thinks. He gets up and throws off his shirt, flings it to the ground. He stumbles through the dark towards the bathroom, hurts his finger with how hard he flicks the light switch on.

He watches himself in the mirror: pale chest blotchy with emotion, thick eyebrows pulled together in so much fury they almost touch, the dark scar on his shoulder, the fresh one on his stomach. He watches himself as he presses down on the L-shaped wound, feeling the pain rising inside him. He presses it again, and again, feels the fillet knife jut through him, feels his own bayard rip up and exit him. He imagines himself killing Molnev. Punishment. It had been easy. Not the after part, no, not the being grasped, not the understanding, not the being stitched together then ripped apart and then stitched together again - but before that. It had been easy to sink his bayard into the Galra soldier, he had even taken pleasure in it, and the thought scares Keith, it scares him into pressing down on the healing wound again, to feel it. _Impermanence_ starts to feel a lot like _Look. Look_. Now he sees. He sees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you've enjoyed this first chapter, I'll be uploading the next part. Have a safe holiday, y'all!
> 
> [Keith's Scars Art!](https://carmellello.tumblr.com/post/638136833828683777/the-line-below-his-belly-button-where-the-knife)
> 
> Works Referenced:
> 
>  **Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides, Anne Carson**  
>  Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.
> 
>  **Mercy, Yves Olade**  
>  It’s the same story over & over. My body hunting-field. My body slaughterhouse. I’m coughing up my own lungs. I’m spilling all this red into the street. I do it because I love you. I can’t help it, if I love you.
> 
>  **Self Portrait as a Hairpin Turn, Yves Olade**  
>  I fell onto love like a sword
> 
>  **The Affliction, Marie Howe**  
>  And he: (and this was almost unbearable)  
> He saw me see him,  
> And I saw him see me
> 
>  **Obit, Victoria Chang**  
>  The way grief needs oxygen. The way every once in a while, it catches the light and starts smoking. The way my grief will die with me. The way it will cleave and grow like antlers.
> 
>  **Unrest in Baton Rouge, Tracy K. Smith**  
>  Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean.
> 
>  **Hannibal, Mizumono, Steve Lightfoot and Bryan Fuller**  
>  HANNIBAL: (CONT’D)  
> I let you in. I let you know me. I let you see me.  
> WILL GRAHAM:  
> You wanted to be seen.  
> HANNIBAL:  
> By you. A rare gift I've given you. But you didn't want it.  
> WILL GRAHAM:  
> Didn't I?
> 
>  **Movement Song, Audre Lorde**  
>  beyond anger or failure  
> your face in the evening schools of longing
> 
>  **I’ll Give You The Sun, Jandy Nelson**  
>  “No!” I shout, jumping up from the chair. “No!”  
> Only I don’t do that.  
> I run to the egg-timer, grab it off the table, and ring it and ring it and ring it.  
> Only I don’t do that either.


End file.
